The more you consider all that happened in the disastrous 2011-12 General Assembly session, the clearer it becomes that one of the defining moments came during the Senate budget debate last month when Republican leaders refused to allow debate about a tax cut for millionaires in a budget that was slashing education funding and ignoring eugenics victims.

Democrats offered an amendment to cap what was billed as a small business tax cut to make sure that only small businesses would receive it. The News & Observer reported a few weeks earlier that the tax break was also going to millionaire lawyers, owners of medical practices, private equity partners, even some well-heeled lobbyists.

The tax cut cost the state $336 million a year. The amendment that Republicans refused to allow senators to vote on would have saved $141 million by allowing only small businesses to receive the break and used the savings to lessen the damaging cuts to public schools and pay for compensation to the survivors of the state’s eugenics program.

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